Confused about Michigan Primary? Here’s help

I want to thank Scotter for the post he did last week on why some Democratic voters may opt for Mitt Romney at the Michigan primary this Tuesday. Though I highly doubt I will vote for Romney, Scotter’s idea offers an alternative to “Uncommitted”, but I especially liked the post because it brought Scott Gifford, creator of www.WhoStoleMiVote.org, out of the woodwork and directed me to his informative site.
By reading Scott’s site, I am beginning to understand how dire this situation is for Democratic voters (essentially, our votes will not be counted) and what we can do to help ensure this doesn’t happen again (sign a petition, tell others about the site).

While I do not agree with the Democratic National Committee’s choice to not count the votes of Michigan Democrats, I still don’t understand who decided to move Michigan’s primary election to January in the first place and why it was done if the repercussions of doing so are so severe. I also have no clue what to do since I planned to vote for Obama.

2 Comments so far

Thanks for the mention! (although it’s http://WhoStoleMiVote.org not .com) You wanted to know how we got into this mess, and I thought I would share my understanding of the situation. The Michigan legislature apparently thought the Democratic National Committee was bluffing when they said they would not seat our delegates and would prohibit campaigning if they moved the primary up. Everybody on the Michigan side seemed to assume that the DNC would back down, but they didn’t. Presumably behind-the-scenes negotiations happened, and they weren’t able to work anything out. It seems to me that both sides put their own factional interests above Michigan’s voters, and as a result we lost our voice in the primary election.

Scott, I apologize for getting the site wrong; it has been corrected in the post.

Thank you for explaining a little bit of why we are where we are.

I still don’t understand why the primary was moved, though; is there some major difference between having the vote now and having it in August or whenever it usually occurs? I haven’t seen anything about this and it is frustrating.

I hope our legislature has learned from this experience and never does anything like this again. Sure, the DNC is being a stick in the mud by not backing down, but in my eyes, the legislature is to blame here: they should have taken the DNC’s threats seriously and not fooled around with our votes.

Detroit Census TriplicationMollika* I had to return a fourth survey. I am representing the non-Doctor Indian population of Detroit :0)likwidshoe It’s all about representation, not funding. Detroiters needs to lose the entitlement mindset.